I suggest that killing Goddard be part of BRAC. Greens infest that place…John Christy and the guys at UAH need those responsiblities.

I want Goddard dead.

Human spaceflight is a mess, and has been a mess for a long time. But the science mission directorate is still able to get things done, and they are often amazing things — thanks to the disciple enforced by their science reviews, procedures, and (outside the largest missions) political kibitzing from Congress. There are inefficiencies and bloat in the SMD, too, sure (read some of Casey Handmer’s recent essays on this point), but this remains a part of NASA that still usually returns good value for dollars spent. And judging by a few of Isaacman’s X posts, I have the sense that he basically agrees. This is not to say that the SMD isn’t an area that *could* benefit from more commercial approaches in some areas, and there are at least signs that they are starting to dip their toes in that pond. Something else for Isaacman to review.

That said, so much of NASA was physically built at a time when it had more money to spend, and the physical facilities are showing it in many places. I think there’s room to shed some NASA facilities and even a center or two, and it’s way overdue to look at all that. Maybe you need a presidential military base closing commission to make it politically sellable?

It’s time to scrap NASA (“Never A Straight Answer”); it’s no longer the bootstrapping program it was in the Sixties and has become entrenched in Pournelle’s “Iron Law of Bureaucracy”.

Hopefully Isaacman (as someone that has been in space recently in a well tested option) can finally pull the plug before more time and money are wasted. If a program is too expensive to even build the equipment to have test flights while there are other less expensive (especially to taxpayers) and more fully tested options that are expected to be available within a similar or faster time frame, it should be an easy call. The Space program decisions should not be reliant on how many Congress critters are getting rewarded for their support when the private sector is building far better for far less.

While some populists have targets, some in the populace do too…as we saw with United Healthcare’s CEO.

You can just about drive right into Boca–security is better…still…

I understand some new tankage is to be partly underground… that’s a good thing…the new tower looks like it is back a bit more from the beach….

What may have looked to be another turkey shoot…might wind up being more like Enemy at the Gates.

Job #1
Getting folks in the Secret Service who knows their jobs.

I remember G. Gordon Liddy’s old radio program….one episode he lamented about bodyguards being ‘roided out muscle heads. Like the ones George Will complained about I suppose.

Where it seemed the Secret Service took their time…poor Gerald Ford got yanked back from Squeaky Fromm so fast he went into plaid–though you really don’t want your Commander In Chief to look like that.

While many Secret Service veterans still beat themselves up over JFK (different times)–I am with Liddy in praising one particular agent in particular: he wasn’t a 300 pound gorilla–no…he was the man who stepped into the bullet.

I don’t know if Jared reads this or other sites…maybe it is best if he doesn’t.

But just in case he does–wear body armor my friend.

Jared isn’t just Bill Nelson’s replacement-

He just became Will Graham from MANHUNTER.

Artimis excuse is that the program is a small fraction of what Apollo cost, but they waste so much money doing silly things like having too many “partners” that all need a slice of the pie while they endlessly analyze some issue into the ground, while the 10,000 person meter is running.

Artemis is NOT a return to the moon program, it is a white collar welfare project to spread around money until the whole house of cards comes down. The collapse is soon and old Billy Nelson, crafty politician that he is, has positioned Issacman to take the fall. We will see if and how “new” space jujitsu’s “old” space’s trap.

Here’s the thing though–“disruptive” isn’t always a positive term. Bernie looks almost too eager to join DOGE..and might even back a boost to NASA, if he gets the head of the Pentagon served on a plate.

There was an article in Business Insider where there was a bit of a pushback on the part of an Israeli against Elon’s criticism of F-35. Like Mr. Z I was also skeptical at first…lots of good discussion at Secret Projects Forum..some pushback against Sweetman’s book.

With DOGE looking to make Game-of-Thrones “Red Wedding” looking like paper cut in comparison–look for unlikely alliances.

I don’t know if the rest of you have noticed this–is it my imagination–or is Fox sounding more like Michelle Obama’s food police? They echo Maddow in the corn syrup fear mongering.

That means Obamacare is here to stay, but the farm vote is about to take it up the silo instead.

My head is spinning.

Administrator-designate Isaacman is, almost certainly, already hard at work preparing to hit the ground running. Silk-pursing the Artemis sow’s ear will absolutely be Job One for him.

The shortest, and least politically-fraught, path to saving Artemis – i.e., cancelling SLS and possibly Orion – would be to secure proposals, at warp speed, for alternative means of getting astronauts to cis-lunar space. NASA has little budgetary flexibility at this point so proposers would have to agree to start work immediately via either unfunded Space Act Agreements or SAAs with only token funds attached in the expectation of being paid more no earlier than one or two fiscal years out. As a practical matter, the only two firms capable of agreeing to such terms would be SpaceX and Blue Origin.

With proposals in-hand, work could be authorized while attention in the Administrator’s office could turn to the financial and political tasks needed to effect a cancellation of at least SLS. Orion could be on the chopping block too if Blue Origin’s proposal does not involve launching Orion on New Glenn.

2025 was already shaping up to be the most interesting year in the history of U.S. manned spaceflight. Now, it seems certain be dialed up to 11.

Because the legacy component of Artemis is a chronically hardware poor program. They simply don’t have the SLS launchers or Orion CSMs to do the kind of testing campaign they really need to do. And they are not capable of operating at the kind of mission cadence they would need to do it in any sort of timely manner.

Contrast with Apollo. Which despite being on an absolutely brutal timeline managed 16 test flights of Saturn rockets, including 5 Apollo CSMs in various earth orbit profiles, before they ever put human beings on top of one. And when they did, as we all know, they then undertook four manned test missions of increasing complexity before they attempted a landing.

This is the most fundamental reason why even Artemis program managers have told the GAO that the program is not sustainable.

I went further and suggested that Nelson was setting the stage for China landing first on the moon (somewhere) beating our return date to the moon. Our excuse will be that “Sure Chinas landed on the moon, WE already did that 55 years ago and now we are going for a harder polar landing objective.”

Pam Melroy made the point later that “we are now in a day for day slip” condition on the schedule. We have doinked around enough (years & years) now that we probably do not have sufficient runway to solve issues that will naturally occur. Things don’t look good for getting there before China.

Kshatriya, the Deputy Administrator for Moon to Mars Program, speech (while he was sitting in Germany) demonstrated reasons why there are multiple significant problems with Artemis:

1. He is in Germany coordinating 55 nations, a dozen + industry partners and over “10,000 industry workers” instead of having his butt back at his office working the problem with a small tight team of problem solvers. NASA wasting huge amounts of money churning giant staffs to demonstrate political virtue statements rather than money going to solving technical problems with multiple stepped tests of hardware and analysis.

2. Heatshield differences from the working and proved Apollo shield are the way they are because some material components are banned due to our environmental green fetishes.

Combining 1 & 2 one wonders why heatshield testing similar to Apollo with Little John II did not occur – flying steep powered suborbital trajectories to test the shield at at least near similar conditions. Given the life support, electrical issues they covered, why not a Apollo 7 like shakedown flight in LEO ?

As Robert keeps pointing out NASA continues to say that they won’t fly until safety is assured yet they are taking short cut steps all over the place while holding commercial operators to a very different and sterner standards. What a disaster!